Language As Social Fact Summary

Language is a social fact which also controls the individual. An individual is born in a society where a certain language is spoken this is how language is external to him. He is made to learn that language in order to communicate with others. Language exerts a constrain on the individual and communication because of vocabulary. According to the Swiss linguist and semiotician Saussure all languages are social facts. Saussure studied language according to Durkheim’s view that languages are social facts. He claimed that languages are social facts because none of the speakers of a certain language know all the words of a language. Saussure described language as “a product of the collective mind of linguistic groups” and “language is not complete in any speaker; it exists perfectly only within a collectivity” (Saussure, 1916, p 649). Durkheim wrote extensively on religion as well, his views on religion can be seen in his text “The elementary forms of

In his text “The Rules of the Sociological Method” he provides ways on how to study social facts. First he mentions how social facts should be studied as things and no as ideas. This is an attempt to fit sociology with the requirements of positivism. This is the most important of all the rules he has given because when one studies social facts as things he believes that they exist prior to the individual and they exist independent of the individual. All rules and laws a person follows in society have existed before that person was born and will continue to exist after the person dies. Therefore social facts should be treated as independent things and not as ideas. The second rule that he mentions for studying social facts is that the sociologist must clearly mark out and define the social facts being researched or studied. This helps in providing verifiability to the object of research. Through this way a person can know whether his research is sound or